usa to amsterdam to brussels to bergamo

it is overwhelming to report on all of our many travels thus far. we have finally returned to our little apartment in belgium and are gearing up to start work on monday. yesterday, we called some family to check in and such and it seems people are somewhat interested in hearing about the trip so i thought i might as well dive into the depths of our adventure and pound out a post for you all...but mostly for my worrying mother. i figure i may as well start at the beginning of the trip and i will take you through in what i project to be a series of posts. don't be a hater.
our trip started early in the morning on the 25th when we packed our bags and headed to the airport only to arrive in belgium many, many hours later. i just asked cade how long it actually took but he just looked puzzled and started rambling off random times... this is due to the fact that cade and i completely lost the 26th- meaning, i don't think we ever lived it. this was obviously apparent as our ragged faces turned up in the brussels airport. we were told that someone from the company would be there to pick us up and take us to the apartment so we could drop our luggage off and prepare for our flight to italy. we scoured the place looking for a guy named kevin, who i had never met and cade had met like twice. panic started to set in as we realized nobody was there and we had nowhere to go. i kept eying anyone and everyone who looked the least bit american in an effort to convince them it was me they were looking for but seriously no luck. cade figured out how to use one of the airport phones and it wasn't too long before we finally found dear kevin who had been scouring the airport looking for us...he turned out to be one of the american looking people i stared down earlier. he drove us to our new apartment which is so fun and different. we have bits of sparse ikea furniture and a charming little kitchen...we are excited to make it our home. needless to say, by the time we arrived, we were pooped! our plane to pisa, italy didn't leave for like 4 hours so we decided to take an hour nap and get to the airport early- just to be safe. we set the alarm and passed out.....
for those of you who know me well, you may have already guessed what happened- we woke up like 3 hours later, blundered our way to the airport and missed our flight. what a start! we were able to catch another flight headed to italy that left as soon as we booked it, but instead of heading to pisa, we were on our way to bergamo- not really on our itinerary but italy nonetheless. fortunately, we had purchased a book called 'let's go europe: on a budget' which gave us the name of a little hostel in bergamo that has 24 hour reception. after a while, we found the hostel, bought some rolls from a vending machine and passed out again in our 8 person dormitory. we were the first to fall asleep and slowly as the night went on, more and more people sneaked into the room and into a bed. the time change threw us for a loop as cade and i both found ourselves wide awake at 4 in the morning listening to a dutch guy's snoring- neither of us aware the other was awake. it was interesting sleep in separate twin beds after sharing a bed for so long. it made me have horrible dreams that cade took one of the dutch girls in our room to the bar and left me alone in the room. i woke up mad at cade and it took my emotions a while to realize it was all a dream.

we decided that since we were in bergamo, we may as well see what it had to offer before we took off to florence- we had hotel reservations there that night. bergamo turned out to be a cute little town. we walked the streets, saw some churches and, after realizing how expensive everything is, bought a huge pizza that we ate for lunch, linner and dinner. then we set off for florence...